


the beast with the dirty paws

by Sorrel



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 19:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5304725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s only later, as he watches her collapse in the wake of the closed rift, watches Cassandra and Varric rush to her side with a kind of distant wondering, that he realizes that he never did find out her name."</p>
<p>Three encounters Solas has with the woman who will be Inquisitor: before, during, and after the closing of the Breach.  She's nothing like anything he could have expected, and she could grow to be either his most dangerous enemy or his greatest ally.  He must be certain that she chooses the latter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the beast with the dirty paws

When the survivor is brought down from the Temple of Ashes, Solas is already in Haven, offering his services as a healer to help with the wounded that are pouring in from every corner of the valley. Risky, to expose himself as an apostate in a town full of panicked, grieving faithful, but he has ways of leaving quickly if tempers get the better of common sense, ways that not even their Templars can prevent, and it’s his best chance to get information for now. He doesn’t know what the magister did, but he _will_ find a way to stop it.

He hides it behind a steady calm that reassures his patients, but underneath he is absolutely incandescent with rage. How _dare_ he. How _dare_ he take Solas’s power and use it to split open the Veil like a clumsy butcher’s knife, pulling spirits forcibly across to their own corruption, doom, and death. The Breach is a bloody massacre within the Fade and without, and it goes against every plan and every moral that Solas holds to have torn it thus. With his own _power,_ Void take the creature. It is not to be borne.

But still he works, casting healing spell after healing spell, enhancing so many vials of simple elfroot potion with his magic that he thinks he will never forget the smell. It’s only the space of a day, perhaps less, before the most marvellous news comes down from the Chantry: there is a survivor. A woman who fell out of the very Fade itself, whole in body, no injuries other than the inability to wake her. Her palm still sparks with the magic of the Veil, they say, and in ugly whispers she is blamed for the murder of the Divine. After all, how could she not be at fault, when she holds the Breach in miniature in her very hand?

If ever Solas believed in any kind of higher power, he might have sent up a prayer of thanks. The Anchor. _His bloody Anchor,_ on the palm of a mortal girl, an affront not to be borne in the regular way of things, but- that magister may have completed the ritual, but the power had not sealed to his monstrous hand. No, the orb found its way to some bystander, some random girl who was taken wholly into the Fade and then walked out again.

It probably won’t work. She’ll likely die before she could wake. But it’s a possibility. It’s hope, when otherwise there is none. He will leave no stone unturned, if it could heal this Breach.

It takes an hour or so to talk his way into visiting their prisoner, but even so suspicious a mind as Lady Leliana’s is willing to grasp at offered straws. He grinds his teeth a little at the filth and the chains in the cells underneath the Chantry (and what sort of virtue is promoted by a prison in a place of worship, he thinks but does not say) but telling them that they have the wrong prisoner is an endeavor destined for failure, so he does not try. Instead he lets them lock the cell door behind him and settles to his knees next to her on the floor.

She is an elf, he can tell that at a glance- too small to be anything else, and even under the ends of her shaggy, raggedly-trimmed hair he can see the points of her long ears. Pale-skinned, indicating a southern heritage, and small of form, diminished in the way of people in this age. At least her cheek, what he can see of it under the filth and soot, is unmarked. He has enough frustrations about his situation without adding a member of the Dalish into the mix.

She is curled tightly in her bed of straw, her marked hand clutched so tight to her belly that even insensate, it takes him some minutes to coax her onto her back so that he can examine it. True to the reports, soft green light worms its way through the skin of her palm, and he wastes a moment of grief, knowing that it will take her life one way or another- and then he clears his mind and looks at it with a mage’s eye, and begins to set the bindings. If she is to die from his mistakes like so many of the others, let it not be today. Not when she might still be of use.

Some time later, he knows not how long, he is roused by the clanging of the keys in the lock, and he looks up to see Lady Leliana and Lady Cassandra. Fear wars with hope on their faces.

“Will she live?” the Lady Seeker asks, in her blunt way.

“Perhaps,” Solas says. He weaves the last tendrils of his binding and then seals it with a wave of his hand. Not his tidiest work, he must admit, but elegance needs must be discarded in favor of efficiency at times like these. “I have kept the mark from spreading, which will keep it from draining her life essence while she sleeps.”

“But?” Lady Leliana prompts.

“But unless the Breach is sealed, the binding will not hold for long. As it expands, so too will the mark."

"So it _is_ connected to the Breach."

_As if it could possibly be anything else,_ he thinks but does not say. "Indeed, I would hypothesize that it is the only thing capable of closing it.”

He is careful to say it steadily, to keep from letting his words linger ironically on the word _hypothesize,_ but still Lady Leliana’s gaze sharpens onto his face. He goes still, preparing himself to flee if he must, until she says, “And must she be awake, for this mark to do its work? Could we take her to the Breach, or must she be conscious in order to accomplish the task?”

An excellent question, actually. If only he could answer in the negative. “Unfortunately, the latter. It would take an act of will, not just of proximity.”

He treads close to knowledge which he should not display, given his supposed background, but neither woman seems to notice. “Then when will she wake?” Lady Cassandra demands. “She must face the consequences of her actions. She must undo this.”

A simplistic way of looking at it- and incorrect, as it happens. Though not outside the bounds of reason, considering what little they know. “They may not have been her actions,” he says gently, then moves swiftly onwards before he can allow her to bog them down into an argument about a topic of which he should have no knowledge. “And the truth is that I cannot say. She may not wake at all.”

“What?”

“She _walked physically in the Fade,_ ” he says, perhaps harsher than is really necessary. He himself still marvels at it, in the moments in between. It should have been impossible. Even for him such a working would have been difficult, but for a mortal it should not have been within the veriest realm of possibility. “She should not have been able to enter. Once entered, she should not have been able to return. She certainly should not have been able to return alive. I have some small healing arts, but I could not begin to understand what changes it might have wrought on her body. Any healer can tell you that even a knight who was merely hit very hard on the head will sleep as long as they must for the body to repair itself, and this is very far outside of any of our realm of experience.”

Both women fall silent, as does he, the enormity of the situation at hand sinking on their shoulders like an enemy’s arm. “How long?” Lady Leliana asks. “Before your bindings fail?”

_Before it kills her,_ he hears, and sighs. “Three days,” he says. “Perhaps less. It’s hard to say with any degree of certainty.”

“Two days, then,” Lady Cassandra says. Her face is graven with worry and grief, and he realizes in that moment that she is older than he first credited her, perhaps almost forty. Near the age he purports to be. “We will do all we can in that time. Solas, would you be willing to help our soldiers in the Valley?”

It is a step well beyond the healing he has done, to aid on the front lines, but he thinks better of her for asking, rather than demanding. “I will,” he says, and looks back down at the girl. “Let me finish here, and I will join you shortly.”

“Of course,” she says, and leaves with no further pleasantries. Lady Leliana remains, looking down at the girl with a peculiar expression on her face.

“I wonder what she was even doing there,” she says, almost to herself.

“Excuse me?”

She glances up to him, and he realizes that she didn’t meant to say it aloud. “You don’t often see the Dalish away from their clans,” she tells him. “Much less wearing mercenary’s armor and attending a political conference full of humans.”

His stomach turns, though he does not allow it to show on his face. “She does not appear Dalish to me.”

“No? Turn her face a little towards you- yes, like that. Now see?”

He does. The side facing him is smooth and clear, but the other is smudged and he can see the patterns along the outer line of her cheekbone, smeared where the face paint was rubbed free during her imprisonment or the misadventure that preceded it. He can see only an incomplete section, but it’s enough to recognize the mark of the Shadowalker, the Lord of the Dark Paths, the beast they now call Lord of Secrets. Dirthamen.

“It was a very good paint,” Lady Leliana continues, as if unaware of how his stomach has dropped, the ringing in his ears that sounds like cosmic irony. “My agents did not spot her. This is not her first time in disguise. But I don’t suppose it matters now, does it?”

“No,” he says, and forces himself to straighten, to get up despite knees protesting too long on cold hard stone. If the universe is laughing at him, bringing him hope in the form of a girl who branded herself a slave and called it superiority, who would likely sneer and call him flat-ear for his own freedom… Well, it doesn’t really matter. This is the hand that they were dealt, and he will, as always, make the best of it. “I don’t suppose it does.”

He turns and leaves the cell without a backward glance. And three days later, word comes down from Haven: the prisoner is awake.

**~*~**

Meeting her in person is… Not what he expects. Some part of him truly can't believe that it will work even as he seizes her hand in his and thrusts it toward the rift. And yet, when she succeeds… She stares down at her hand with an exhausted sort of wondering, looks from her hand to his face and says, " _I_ closed that thing? How?"

He explains, Varric interjects, introductions are made, and yet Solas experiences it as if from a distance, watching her with curious eyes. She is… so very _mortal,_ and yet she walked the Fade and lived. He hoped for her to wake even as he knew it wasn't possible, and yet here she is. It’s impossible, and yet it happened.

He watches her especially during her bantering with Varric, trying to glean any possible scrap of information about the girl who holds the seal to his power on her palm. Or _woman,_ as he should more properly say- some enterprising soul has scrubbed both dirt and paint alike from her face, leaving the hateful markings bare, but also revealing her to be older than was his first assumption. She is still small and delicate of feature, but even these quickling children of the elvhen show their age more slowly than humans, and he knows enough of the Dalish to know that she is a full adult, at least, to have earned her markings. Perhaps twenty years old, and quick to let Varric draw a smile out of her, despite the circumstances. Naivety or a merry nature?

“My name is Solas,” he says, drawing her attention back to him. “If there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see you still live."

"He means, 'I kept that mark from killing you while you slept,'" Varric interjects. The girl's eyes flick to the dwarf and back to him, and in that split second he sees calculation.

"You seem to know a great deal about it all," she tells him, and her eyes are wide with curiosity, but he can see the muscle tick at the back of her jaw. Playing the wide-eyed child so as to be underestimated, he realizes, though for his benefit of that of the Seeker, he knows not. Either way, she is neither naive nor casually friendly. She knows full well what she does, every word and gesture calculated- not unlike himself, his congeniality as false in the face of Cassandra's rage as everything else about his personal history.

She banters with him about the Breach, letting a little of her cynicism slip in- for his benefit, as the innocent wonder was for Cassandra's, he's sure. She engages with him as easily as with the dwarf, her smile as ready, her charm as apparent- but now that she has turned it on him, he can see it for the fabrication that it is. Oh, she might also be a friendly sort generally, but there is a watchful distance in her golden eyes, and he revises her age upward yet further, perhaps to the quarter-century mark. This one is wary, and it is not the usual Dalish distrust of anyone not marked as they, but the pragmatic cunning of one predator to another.

It’s a complication, but not a large one. Her people call him the prince of lies; one mortal girl, however clever, should pose no true obstacle. She is charming, even considering the pain and stress she must be under, and he meets it with his own charm, earns a quicksilver flash of a smile that seems more genuine than the others. She has no insult for his unmarked face, not a hint of it in speech or expression, which is surprising but perhaps a facet of her performance as much as any lack of prejudice on her part. Only time will tell there- if she survives, of course. Solas intends to make sure that she does.

She does, he can’t help but notice, manage not to give her own name in return for the length of the conversation, and by the time he notices the lapse the conversation has already turned to their plans to move forward, and there is no easy way to bring it up once more. Interesting. Though not surprising, if he thinks about it. She was attending the Conclave in disguise, after all, which means that she has some talent for deception and some motivation to avoid giving personal information. He thinks again of her watchful gaze and finds himself certain that she has learned more about them, in the short hours she has been awake, than any of them have learned about her. Not just a spy- a good one.

Not all of her is deception, however; of this, Solas is sure. Her willingness to help is no lie, as far as Solas can judge- though he suspects that she is much less optimistic about her chance for survival than the Lady Cassandra. Behind her easy manner, he can see the wary tension in the line of her back, the pained lines cutting deeper grooves around her eyes, the downward curve of her mouth when she thinks none are looking that speaks of resignation. She believes that she is going to die here, surrounded by enemies who believe her responsible for all this death and destruction.

And yet, when Cassandra leads them forward, she follows with a smile.

It saddens him, even as he files away her willingness to martyr herself for later use. The markings on her face do not excuse the wrong that has been done to her, due to no fault but his own arrogance and carelessness, and he can respect her spirit even as he distrusts her motivations. It doesn’t matter. She is doing the right thing, the _only_ thing that can be done, and seems to be doing it of her own accord, if Lady Cassandra’s reluctant concern is anything to go by. She believes that she is giving of her life to help others, and she may not be wrong. In this, as in so many other things in this ruined future, there is no blame to be held but his own.

It causes him to stay close to her side as they press onwards down the path, ready to offer a hand if need be. She gives him a sideways glance, not unaware of what he is doing if unknowing of the guilt that drives it, but she doesn’t protest. She even thanks him, in her low clear voice, when he catches her arm to stop her from stumbling over a loose patch of stone. He nods and they walk on.

There are demons. There is death. There is a seemingly endless walk through the stark white cold of the mountains, lit harshly by the sickly green from the Breach in the sky and the mark on her palm that spits and writhes intermittently. He is more sensitive to the disturbance in the Veil than even most other mages, and the _wrongness_ of it leaves him tense and agitated, biting on his tongue to keep from picking for no other cause than to share his misery.

_I’ve never been good at regret,_ he thinks to himself wryly. _How fitting that I have little cause to feel much else._

The Lady Seeker takes a wound along her side from a demon’s claw in their next skirmish, and they pause in their ascent for Solas to treat it. He has nothing to use as a poultice but a few leaves of elfroot, hastily chewed to bring them to full potency and pressed against the gash to slow the bleeding. He swishes a quick mouthful of snow to clear the lingering traces from his tongue to prevent numbness, then begins to rummage through his pack to see if there is any scrap of cloth that can yet be used as a bandage. The elfroot will help, but it won’t hold unless it can be kept flush against her skin-

He hears a ripping noise, and looks up to find the prisoner has tossed aside her mis-matched bracer and torn her left sleeve clean to the elbow. “Lost the glove anyway,” she says, with a wry smile. “Anyone got a knife? The Lady Seeker took all of mine.”

“You had seven,” Lady Cassandra says through gritted teeth. She is currently holding the poultice tight against the wound, and does not seem to be pleased about it. “It was a precaution.”

"Bet you're regretting that now, hmm?" Varric snorts and offers her his boot knife, a lopsided grin on his face. “Thanks,” she tells him, and lifts her wrist to her mouth, holds the end of her sleeve in her teeth to cut the rest short at her elbow. She passes the bundle off to Solas. “Will this work?”

“It’s not really long enough to wrap around, but-” He pulls Cassandra’s hand free and swiftly puts the bundled fabric in its place, before the poultice can slide free. “-I can tighten the breastplate over it, which should hold for a time,” he says, suiting action to word. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the girl slide Varric's knife into her remaining bracer rather than return it to its rightful owner. Varric, far from demanding it back, turns away with a quickly hidden smile. “There. It will serve until you can see a healer in the forward camp.”

“Who has time for such things?” Lady Cassandra demands, and hauls herself to her feet with a grunt. “We must go. We have delayed too long already.”

She slides her sword back into its sheathe and marches off, Varric falling in behind her with an amused look backward. Solas straightens from his crouch and shoulders his pack once more, shaking his head.

“You are very welcome,” he mutters under his breath, and then looks over to see the girl laughing, very quietly. Embarrassing, that he forgot someone was within hearing distance- but good that he can make her laugh. He’ll be able to use that.

“You’re a good healer,” she says.

“A compliment I would not have suspected from a Dalish,” he replies. She hunches her shoulders into a shrug and falls into step beside him.

“I’m guessing you don’t like us much, huh?”

"Let us just say that they proved unwilling to accept any education I could offer."

"I'm sure you said it just like that, too," she says tightly. He turns his head, ready to snap a response- only to find that she isn't looking at him at all, but rather straight ahead, left hand clenched into a fist against her thigh. What he took for anger in her voice was, upon reflection, likely something else altogether.

He lets part of his consciousness slide into the Fade, and sees the mark spiralling up her forearm, almost to her elbow. Closing the rift earlier loosed his bindings, and it is spreading once more. The pain must be excruciating.

“We are almost there,” he tells her, his voice steady despite his renewed rush of guilt, and she spares him a brief, wry look that tells him more than words ever could.

“I know,” she says, and focuses on placing her wavering feet along the rocky path.

At the gates to the forward camp, another rift writhes, spilling from its depths shades that mill around a ground slippery with the blood of the dead. These prove harder to fell, and Solas finds himself pinned against a wall with only a flicker of mana to protect him until an arrow sprouts from the eye of the shade above him. He looks startled to his left to find her standing near the gate, pulling arrows from her quiver and firing with a grim determination. He doesn’t know how she can even draw the bow with that hand, must less aim, but she continues to fire until the Seeker removes the head of the final shade with a precise swipe of her sword. Only then does she let the bow drop to the ground from slackened fingers, and raises her hand to the rift.

It seals from the touch of her mark, leaving them all blinking from the sudden cessation of the tessellating green, but she falls to her knees immediately afterward, clutching her hand to her belly. In the sudden quiet after battle, her stifled whimper is startlingly loud.

“Oh, shit,” Varric says, but Solas is already at her side, a calming hand to the back of her neck.

“Let me see,” he commands, and she takes one deep, shuddering breath before forcing herself to uncurl and present her hand to his view.

Damnation, but it’s spread clear to her shoulder already, with tendrils making their way toward her collarbone. The mark is unstable, grasping for completion, and if it finds its way to her heart before she can close the first rift and seal the anchor, she will die unfinished. He cannot allow that to happen.

“This will hurt,” he warns her, and she has time for not more than a pained nod before he takes the last shreds of his mana and _slams_ a binding down on the mark once more.

Any other mage, no matter how learned or powerful, could not have done the same. But however unstable, the mark on her hand was made by _his_ magic, and even in extremis it still recognizes his will.

It is not what he would consider a _comfortable_ process, however, and she nearly tears herself from his grip in the spasms of pain that result. It lasts only a moment, before she controls herself once more into stillness, but it’s enough to draw the attention of their companions.

“F- _fuck!_ ” she stutters, and he feels the Lady Seeker lunge in close behind him, urgent in her concern.

“What did you just do to her?”

“Give them some room, would ya, Seeker,” Varric says, and a moment later the press of chilled steel behind him eases as Cassandra is ushered back to a safe distance. Solas is unconcerned, his entire attention focused on the girl in front of him, her head bowed in pain, the fingers of her right hand digging visibly into her thigh to hold steady. The mark has not retreated back to her palm, and it did every other time he cast the binding, but its progress is halted short of her heart.

For now.

“Are you alright?” he asks, and grimaces at the foolishness of that question even as she spares him an incredulous glance. “Can you stand?” he substitutes instead, and she considers the question, takes a deep breath. Then another. A third.

“It’s a distinct possibility,” she decides, and nods shortly when he puts an offering hand under her elbow. Together, they get her hauled to her feet, and she stands there, wavering, for a long moment before she nods once more.

“Better,” she says, and hunches her shoulders in a shrug. “Thanks.”

“None are needed,” he replies, all too aware where the fault lies. “Are you well enough to continue?”

She utters a short, painful bark of a laugh. “Have to be, don’t I?” Before he can reply, she looks down at the bow now at her feet. “Can you-”

He stoops to pick it up- his name may be _pride,_ but she knows not what she asks, to request him to lower himself before her- and delivers it to her with a flourish, earning himself an awkward smile for the kindness. She takes it with her right hand and slings it across her back with a single breathtakingly graceful movement that he can’t help but admire, in spite of everything else that’s going on.

“Come,” says the Lady Seeker. There is urgency in her voice, but sympathy too. A far duller woman than Cassandra could not help but understand the magnitude of what they are asking of this girl. “We must make haste.”

“Understood,” she says, and gives his shoulder a brief squeeze of thanks with her good hand before she continues on towards the blown-open doors of the forward camp.

It’s only later, as he watches her collapse in the wake of the closed rift, watches Cassandra and Varric rush to her side with a kind of distant wondering, that he realizes that he never did find out her name.

**~*~**

In Haven once more, he considers leaving. The Anchor on her palm might not be fully formed, but it's not killing her any longer, either- at least not for some long time, long enough to repair his mistake and then some. And he is… shall we say, _uncomfortable_ around such expressions of human faith as this… Inquisition. He nearly laughs to hear her called the Herald of Andraste. Thousands of years gone, and minds are still so lacking as to fail to understand the difference between providence and coincidence?

Still, he does yet have need of her, this girl from clan Lavellan. The seal on his power is now keyed to her small mortal form, and there is the small matter of the orb still being in the possession of the magister bent on corrupting the Fade. If he had known that some _human_ would have unlocked the secret to true immortality- ah, but it’s no matter now. He will need to retrieve that from the man’s possession, and hopefully relieve him of his life in the process, but he holds no illusions that he will be able to do it alone. Even in the Fade he is still far diminished from what he once was, and on this side of the Veil he is little better than any other mage. More learned, certainly, and with greater precision and deeper reserves than most, but also lacking any of the raw power that Corypheus wields. The forces already starting to gather around their new Herald are a likely possibility, and his position here at the outset gives him room to guide them as necessary. Such influence would take much longer to gather in other quarters.

Assuming the Lady Seeker doesn’t find some excuse to put him to the sword first. He respects the woman, her convictions and her strength, but recent days have shown that she has an intemperate nature, and the expected distrust of mages, considering her profession. That he is neither Dalish nor a former member of her Circles makes him outside the frame of her understanding, which marks him as more dangerous even than an apostate would otherwise be. And there is the small matter of the Inquisition’s spymaster- the Lady Nightingale, as he has heard her called in hushed whispers, is no foolish courtier to take his history at face value. If he stays, there is a very real chance that his hastily patched-together story about a common village boy who grew into a wandering scholar will be discovered as the shoddy falsehood it was. Not that there is much fear of her discovering the _truth,_ but the suspicion would be dangerous nonetheless.

He and Lavellan see each other only briefly on that first day. He is among the crowd that gathers as she walks out of the Chantry with Lady Cassandra at her side, curious to see the the people’s reaction to her presence, and more curious to see her reaction to _theirs._ She is walking steadily on her feet once more, he can’t help but note, and while her face is still pale it seems more the natural color of her skin rather than the sickly pallor of the dying. She stands straight, not hunched from pain, and some of the lines are gone from around her eyes. Good. She is recovering well, then.

Lady Cassandra takes her left wrist and pulls it up, raising her bare left hand high for all to see. The anchor lies quiescent now, her palm no different to the common eye from any other, but the crowd goes wild all the same, cheering and clapping, whistling and stomping their approval. Only Solas remains silent, his gaze steady on Lavellen’s face- and so he sees when she flinches, almost imperceptibly, before forcing herself to straighten once more and stand steady in Cassandra’s implacable grip. Her eyes flicker as she looks around the crowd, searching for something. Or someone?

He starts to step back, to fade away before he can be spotted, but her unerring gaze lands on him in the moment he moves, and he freezes under the sudden weight of her stare. It’s the startlement at being caught, he tells himself, but even in his own mind he knows it’s because he’s waiting for her reaction. A signal, he thinks, as to whether or not he should make a hasty retreat and focus his efforts elsewhere.

Her smile, when it comes, is very small. But it is a smile, and she gives him a quick nod of acknowledgement before she turns her attention back to Cassandra, and he lets out a slow breath in response before completing his hasty exit from the crowd.

He will stay, then. At least for another few days. Until he can determine which way the wind is blowing, if Lavellan and her Inquisition seem likely allies or likelier enemies. He has come too far to lose the game now.

**~*~**

It is two days later when she finds him in the woods several leagues up the mountain from the town, gathering healing herbs for the desperately ill-supplied apothecary. He does not hear her approach, and reacts… less than gracefully when her shadow falls over his shoulder with no warning.

If she takes poorly to a startled mage nearly impaling her with a charged staff, she shows no sign of it, merely curling her lips in a smile that seems more mocking than afraid. "It's good to know that you aren't perfect, you know. I was starting to worry."

"I cannot think of any who would make such a claim, including myself," he says, sounding calmer than his pounding heart would suggest. Even after a year, he's still unused to the eerie blankness that surround these quicklings, so divided from the Fade in their waking hours. Once it would have been impossible for someone to catch him unawares, when their every breath and thought would have lit the air around them with energy. He feels as deaf and blind as a mere babe: he, who stood against the god-kings of old, who made them curse his name in rage and fear as he picked apart their empire from within. It makes him... uneasy. To say the least. "Was there something you needed?"

She arches one dark brow. "Well, for you to get your weapon off my throat, for starters."

There's a heartbeat of silence before Solas realizes that he is still holding his staff to her neck, lightning crackling down the length and throwing the flat planes of her too-thin face into high relief. He gives a breathless curse and pulls back, releasing the held magic of the spell back into himself and pressing the end of the staff firmly into the ground. An unforgivable lapse of control. "My apologies. No offense was meant."

"And none was taken," she says easily. “I’m told I walk quietly. It can sometimes get a reaction.”

_Quietly_ is an understatement. The ground here in Haven is still covered in snow, and even the most careful of feet would still make a crunching noise as it broke through the crust. He heard nothing.

That being said, she is dressed in what he can only assume is gear of her own choice, tightly fitting scout's leathers over warm wool, all so well-worn and well-cared-for that it makes barely a whisper as she moves. Most importantly, she’s traded the clunky oversized boots from before in favor of leather wraps in the Dalish style, the one tradition of her people that he has gladly adopted. They mold like a second skin to her narrow feet, making her as close to barefoot as the cold will allow, and he knows well how easily it is to step lightly thus accoutered. And she is thin, perhaps no more than seven stone, and light on her feet: he saw as much even on the walk to the Temple, wearing heavier gear and near to collapsing from pain.

Still.

“A reaction you do nothing to encourage, naturally,” he says, and is rewarded by the return of her smile, less mocking this time.

“Just so.” She nods to his satchel. “Gathering supplies?”

Small talk. Somehow, he wouldn’t have expected it of her. _Not that you know anything about her, truly,_ he chides himself. Aloud, he says, “Elfroot, largely. Nothing else of use grows at this elevation.”

“Ah, yes, the trials of living on a bloody mountain. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for some spindleweed. Elfroot’s good to slow the bleeding and prevent infection, but it doesn’t do much for fever or pain. And some lotus for appetite, while I’m wishing.”

“Indeed,” he says, hiding his surprise at the unexpected commentary. “Too bad they grow only in the lowlands, near areas of standing water.”

“Too bad,” she agrees, and laughs at whatever expression is on his face. “I know things, you know. I’m not just good at using pointy things to put holes in people. I have layers.”

“I’m beginning to see that,” he says neutrally. He’s not entirely sure how he feels about it; on one hand, he wouldn’t want a stupid leader, or a thoughtless one, which could do far more damage to an already precarious situation than no leader at all. On the other, he doesn’t know that he _wants_ to learn her layers, to know her as a person instead of as a tool. He already knows that she is clever, and quiet, and brave, that she is willing to help others even in moments of extremity, and that she has enormous strength of will. None of those are qualities that he finds lacking- on the contrary, so far she has shown herself to be entirely admirable. That’s what so dangerous.

The last thing he needs to find among these sorry mortal children is a friend.

“And,” she continues, a little more seriously, “I’ve been down through the sick-tents often enough these past few days. Apparently a holy figure is good medicine for the faithful.”

She doesn’t look too happy about it, which is reassuring, at least. A touch of power can do strange things to people, not least to those who have often felt powerless. “I’m sure your presence was a comfort,” he says, which has the benefit of also being true, as well as chasing away the pensive cast from her face.

“Well enough, eh? Gives me something useful to do, at least.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“Also being useful,” she says cheerfully. “Wandering around after the healers is all well and good, but people also need to eat. This is a small settlement, and the wilds are yet well-stocked with game, as I’m sure you’ve seen. It was decided-” And this is said with the decided drawl of someone unused to having her decisions made by committee. “-that I might best serve the faithful by supplying meat and furs, at least until the roads are cleared to the east.”

He eyes her empty hands, and then says nothing, merely purses his lips and raises a questioning eyebrow.

“I’ve a hunting camp set up a little ways down the slope,” she says with asperity. “I’ll ignore the implied insult to my skills, since we’re having such a friendly conversation.”

He doesn’t know that he’d call it _friendly_ , exactly- they are more like two duelists, circling each other and testing for an interesting response. He doesn’t mistake her easy manner for simplicity, any more than he suspects that she mistakes his reserve for shyness. But from the ironic slant to her smile, she meant to imply nothing less.

“You’re too kind,” he says dryly, and is rewarded by her appreciative chuckle.

“I’m about to be kinder, and invite you to share my camp for the evening.”

There’s a number of ways he can take that phrase- especially from a Dalish woman. However, there is no hint of lascivious intent on her fine-boned face, and while her smile is inviting, her eyes are distant, watchful. Likely he can take the offer at no more than face value- perhaps an interest in examining his motives or his skills as a comrade, but no sexual intent. Still, even an overture of friendship is dangerous enough, at this stage. Safer to forge bonds in battle, which are less likely to lead to uncomfortable questions and weighted more heavily in terms of trust.

“Thoughtful indeed, but I think I shall find my way back to town instead.”

“Will you?” she says, and jerks her chin over his shoulder. When he turns, he’s greeted by the sight of the sun sinking inevitably towards the mountain-top, much lower than he would have thought. He must have lost track of the time, too busy considering the problem of the Inquisition. “It will be hours past dark before you make it off the mountain.”

And he must have wandered farther than he thought, as well. More foolishness. “Your offer is appreciated, but-”

“But you’re really eager to get eaten by a bear on the way down?”

_Hmm._ “I think it’s _my_ turn not to take offense.”

“I wouldn’t let Cassandra attempt it either, if that makes you feel any better. It’s not about your magical ability. Just your woodcraft.”

He’s not sure whether to be amused or insulted. “Because I am not Dalish?”

“Because _anyone_ this far up should have either made camp or left hours ago.”

A fair point- at least from her perspective. He hadn’t considered making camp because he hadn’t felt the need to do so; he is well used to traveling at night, with nothing but a rune for warmth and a ready staff. The moon tonight is bright and full, and navigation through the trees will be easy even after the fall of full night. With the sky scarred but calm, there is nothing on this mountain that can offer him any real threat.

However, she can’t be expected to know that, and there’s something stubborn in the set of her jaw that makes him think that a polite demurral would not suffice. Perhaps in time, she will come to have more faith in his capabilities, but it’s very clear that she has no intention of leaving him to fend for himself this night, and he cannot risk offending her by turning it into an argument. He suspects that they will have enough of those in the weeks and months to come, on far more weighty subjects.

“How do you know I haven’t made camp further up?”

She gives him a slightly scornful look. “At least allow for my ability to scout the forest, if you credit the Dalish nothing else. I wouldn’t have interrupted you if I’d seen you had a place to sleep.”

That’s generous enough that he can’t very well argue any further, not without explaining how local wildlife tends to avoid him on instinct. “Very well,” he acquiesces, hopefully with enough grace to satisfy her. “Show me the way to your camp.”

Her grin is a small thing, just a flash of white teeth in the long shadows drawn by the setting sun, but he finds himself smiling back nonetheless. “See if you can keep up, then,” she says, and then turns and vanishes into the treeline behind her, her dark hair and clothes serving to make her seem just one shadow amongst many. After a moment, it’s hard to pick out her moving form, and he hastens after her, grumbling to himself about young people who feel the need to show off.

Her laughter floats back through the branches ahead. “You’ll get used to it,” she calls, and he shakes his head, hoists his pack higher on his shoulder.

“Perhaps,” he says, more to himself than to her. “Perhaps.”

**~*~**

They pass a pleasant enough evening together, eating copious amounts of slow-roasted venison directly off the spit and traveling bread warmed by the fire. He adds some of his stash of honey, for the bread, and a skinful of fresh springwater flavored with a handful of sweet winter berries, and they stuff themselves nearly to the brim as they trade affable barbs about her precarious status as an unwilling hero and his as an unknown apostate in a camp full of Chantry faithfuls.

She proves remarkably reticent about her own life before the Anchor, even when he tests her with his unfavorable opinions of the Dalish, meeting his unsubtle prodding with an amused distance and turning the conversation back to him with the grace of a true master. He acquiesces, as there is no shame in doing with a worthy opponent, and spins out his web of falsehoods, worn now into something almost comfortable by the force of their repetition. It is nearly inevitable that someone will come to question the story of his history, constructed in haste as it was, but "wandering scholar" is a hard tale to disprove, and it will take the Nightingale some time to even track his origins, much less attempt to verify them. As well, the Inquisition is distinctly lacking in trained mages at the moment, who are the most likely to notice something amiss in his magical talents. By the time newcomers arrive, he will be well-established in his skillset, and the narrow teachings of the Circle mages will lead them to trust in his knowledge rather than challenge its origins. If he is careful, he should be safe. For a time, at least.

“Well, you can call me officially impressed,” she says at last, lounging back on her elbows on her bedroll. She used a bit of snowmelt to scrub the sticky traces of honey from her hands and face, and she’s pink-cheeked and smiling, the intricate whorls of her _vallaslin_ lit like shadows by the low light of the campfire. He still finds it grotesque to see the People wearing those as marks of pride, and the intervening millennia have not been long enough for him to forget the atrocities the Shadowalker committed against his enemies and slaves alike, but they do look handsome enough on her, he is forced to admit. Perhaps in time, he will come to see them as merely part of her face. Certainly none of the humans seem to see anything amiss. “You’ve learned a great deal for your years, I’ll give you that.”

“I am older than I appear,” he says, amused. She could not possibly know the magnitude of _that_ statement, but even his mortal shell stopped aging well past the first blush of youth. “And very dedicated to my studies.”

“Very well, _hahren,_ ” she teases, and he just barely catches himself before grimacing in annoyance. No man wants to be called so by a pretty girl, regardless of circumstance. She must catch something on his face despite his efforts to remain neutral, because she chuckles lightly and says, “Oh, not _that_ much older than you look, hmm?”

There’s not really much he can say to that, so he says nothing.

“Either way, I meant no offense. Your studies have definitely proven useful.”

There’s an ease in her manner that was most definitely not there hours ago, and he finds it soothing, despite his own determination to be wary. Even in the valley he noticed her ready smile, and he should have realized then how much of a problem it would be. He has known any number of clever people, and still more that he’d call charming, but both in combination is dangerous to a man starved of worthy companionship. He can’t afford to relax around her, not the way that her easy smile invites him to do.

“Do you measure the worth of all things by their usefulness?” he says, because curiosity was ever his downfall, seconded only by his arrogance. If she will not tell him of her past- and why should she owe it to him?- he would at least have something of the way she thinks. _It’s only sensible,_ he reassures himself, _if you’re going to be working with her in the months to come._ “Is that the Dalish way?”

“If you’re not careful I’m going to start blaming everything _you_ do on your parents and see how you like it,” she says, though still with that affable distance, no bite yet come to her tongue. “If I’m a practical sort, it’s because life has taught me to be, not my clan.”

“Most Dalish I have met would say that their clan _is_ their life.”

“And most Dalish you have met, I’d wager, weren’t the sort to go spying on human gatherings, either,” she returns. “If you’re determined to get me to defend my clan you’re welcome to continue your poking, but I have little enough investment in their traditions one way or another. Any more than you seem to have taken your simple village upbringing to heart,” she adds, with a twinkle to her eye. “We are both of us not what our parents expected.”

There’s little enough the man he purports to be could say to that, so he concedes the point with a rueful tip of his head. She’s right enough, anyway, for all that he barely remembers any family he once might have had. They could not have expected this of him, any more than anyone from his time could have expected _anything_ like this. Who ever expects their world to end?

Her teeth flash in a brief grin at her victory, but she covers it with her mug, draining the last of her water before turning to pack it away amongst her things. The firelight paints red into the ends of her black hair, and her stares for longer than he’d like, wondering- not for the first time- what to make of her.

His gaze is safely averted by the time she turns back, but he watches out of the corner of his eye as she prepares for bed, conversation apparently set aside in favor of sleep. She wriggles into her bedroll with the grace born of experience, pulls her leather coat over her small frame with a little sigh of satisfaction. He himself is grateful for his heavy fur cloak, but even so he feels the bite of the winter wind. Her coat seems insufficient, but she can, evidently, take care of herself. It’s none of his concern.

“Jokes aside,” she says after a moment, her voice already low and soft with oncoming sleep. “I am grateful for your help. We could use you to figure out how these Rifts work. _If_ you’re staying, that is.”

He more or less said as much, in their earlier conversation- but even so, his mind was not completely made up. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise him that she picked up on his ambivalence.

“I’ll stay until the Breach is sealed,” he says after a moment, and she makes a satisfied noise before hitching the coat higher over her shoulder. The black fur of the collar brushes against her cheek, gives her a wild, haughty cast in the fire and shadows.

“Good,” she says, and rolls over and to all evidence, goes almost immediately asleep.

If it takes him longer to follow, well, no one could say that he doesn’t have things on his mind.

**~*~**

That night, he discovers something else, something he hadn’t noticed before, with his quarters clear on the other side of town from hers: in the Fade, all roads lead to her.

It isn’t… _strictly_ a concern for him, comfortable navigating the boundaries of the Fade as he is, but it is at least somewhat worrisome, the degree of pull her sleeping mind exerts upon his. He wonders if another mage would feel it so strongly, or if it’s a side effect of his Mark on her palm, but more than once over the course of the night he finds himself making a turn along a familiar path to find himself at the borders of her sleeping self. He has of course wandered through thousands of dreaming minds over the millennia, a talent he understands is lost in this modern age, but never has he felt the pull so strongly. It worries him less for himself than for any other denizens of the Fade, who perhaps lack the sense of self to understand the need to resist the urge to poke and prod at something new. The spirits firmly rooted in their own domains will be safe, but what of the wisps that wander, ideas not yet given enough form to become? He does not share the foolish terror that modern mages have for spirits in the Fade, but neither does he pretend it is without its dangers. What place is?

And so, on the third time he finds his mind drawn close to hers, he does not try to pull himself away. Instead, he follows the pull of the Anchor and turns inward, letting the edges of his mind meld against her in preparation for a crossing-

-and finds himself flinching backwards from the boundary erected between them. The visual representation of it snaps into place as if it has always been there, a very high wall made of vines with thorns nearly as long as his hand, and woven so tightly that no light penetrates through. He tests the vines with a single paw and then pulls away with a hiss as the thorns slice deep into his pads. No illusion, then, but real. As real as anything is in the Fade, at least.

He closes the wounds with an absent lick and then frowns up at the length of the wall, lips pulled back from his teeth in a distracted snarl of annoyance. She is no mage to interact with her surroundings in the Fade, and even a mage without his skill as a Dreamer should not be able to create things from whole cloth such as this. Then again, this is the same woman who walked here physically, whole of her own body. Much as the Anchor insists on reforming this section of the Fade with her as the center, she likely has a great deal more control over her surroundings than any mortal mind should, even subconsciously.

He wonders what it says about her, that her mind protects itself with walls of thorns so high he can’t see the top- but even as he thinks it, an opening appears among the thorns, a gateway just large enough for a single person to pass. The Anchor, reacting to the presence of its master at last, and allowing him passage to what it would consider his rightful domain. The Anchor was never meant to be on any hand but his own, after all. By the logic of its creation, how could it deny him access to his own mind?

He hesitates in the archway, but as before, his curiosity is his folly, and so he ventures forth. _She won’t remember this when she wakes,_ he reassures himself, and he has committed far greater sins to her person than this invasion of privacy. _And if she does- what Dalish does not occasionally dream of the wolf?_

The vines above his head allow no light to pass through, but still the path is lit, in the way of dreams, with a low steady glow that seems to emanate from nowhere and everywhere at once. It makes it that much of a surprise when the path suddenly opens before him, and he finds himself in a sun-dappled meadow, surrounded not by thorns at all, but a ring of oak trees that loom friendly above the quiet space. A peal of laughter draws his eye, and he turn to see an elven girl, still in the awkward blush of youth, no more than sixteen or seventeen years of age, her hair an untidy mop of golden curls. She’s wearing hunting leathers, well-fitted and well-worn, and as he watches she shifts through the martial forms of the _dirth’ena enasalin-_ changed, of course, to account for the strike of hand and feet rather than magic and will, but still recognizable. There is concentration on her round, flushed face, but there is also joy, the pleasure in the physical form shaped by the perfect application of will. For a moment, Solas longs so strongly for his own world and his own time that he feels nearly sick.

The girl spins into a bow, signalling the end of her practice, and turns so suddenly that he nearly flinches. She is not looking to him, however, but to a small form he had not noticed before, nearly hidden in the shadows cast by the edge of the trees. A girl.

“Come, _lethallan._ You can’t avoid practice forever.”

To the right of the girl, nearly invisible in the shadow cast by the trees, sits Lavellan. She, too, is young, some few years younger than her kin, barely budding on the raggedy edge of adolescence. Her black hair is a long, untidy spill down her skinny back and her bony knees pulled tight to her chest, her chin resting on them. Or rather, she takes the form of a girl, her narrow little face clean and clear of the slave-marks, but the intentness of the expression does not belong to one so seemingly young. Appearances aside, it is the Lavellan of now, her dreaming mind casting her backwards into youth- a memory, most likely, judging by the detail of the surroundings. The Anchor brings it to life, perhaps, but the steadiness of the scene, lacking the usual fragmentation and faded edges of a conjured thought, marks it as having been real, once.

“ _Da’banal’ras,_ ” the girl says, coaxingly. _Little shadow,_ she calls Lavellan, and Solas can’t think that it’s anything but appropriate, given the way that Lavellan nearly fades into the edge of the forest. “Are you worried I’ll show you up? Come on, I’ll go easy on you.”

Lavellan shifts, and looks away- across the meadow, directly at him, standing at the edge of the meadow with one paw still raised as if to step away. Somehow, despite the seeming distance between them, he can see her steady golden gaze as if she were right in front of him.

“Don’t do me any favors,” she says, and it is not the high, thin voice of a child that leaves her tongue, but the low steady tones of the woman. She does not look away from him, a wolf inside the bounds of her domain. Her hand goes to her hip, and he knows in the way of dreams that it will come away with a blade. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

He turns and flees, and the thorns close behind him, only barely missing the tip of his tail when he leaps through the entryway. He lands on steady paws and turns-

-but the wall of thorns is gone, and her dreaming mind with it.

**~*~**

If Lavellan returns to sleep that night he doesn’t know it- he makes sure to roam far away from that corner of the Fade, not wanting to face either the temptation of knowledge or the risk of discovery. The next morning, he wakes to find her packing up the camp around him, and he lies there drowsing for some time longer, watching her from beneath half-closed lids. She moves around the camp with swift, practiced motions: no stride wasted, her hands always going to the correct place. It’s a competency that speaks to years of experience in other such hunting camps, but she doesn’t move as if she’s used to working with a partner, either. There is no hesitation in her motions that would speak to one used to sharing her tasks, no fumbling around the absence of another body in the shared space as he would expect from a Dalish hunter.

Interesting. Another facet of her personality, to add to his growing collection.

Only when she goes to the pack horse to load up her spoils does he get to his feet and begin to collect his own belongings. At the sound of movement she turns briefly, and gives him a faint smile of acknowledgement before lashing the bodies of the deer to her sled. He packs his bedroll and gathers his scattered few possessions, cup and bowl and waterskin, and loads up his pack, all in companionable silence. If she remembers her dream from the night before, remembers a wolf intruding on her sanctuary, she makes no mention of it to him- and why would she? Knowing that he can “dream with full consciousness” would not automatically translate into intruding on the dreams of others, even for a fully educated mage, and even then she would not look for her companion in the skin of a wolf, shapeshifting being even more of a lost art than dreamwalking. If she knew the truth- but that, of course, will never happen.

His belongings collected, he slings his pack up onto his back and waits, politely, for her to notice him standing there before he raises his hand in farewell. She braces one foot on the edge of the sled, pulls hard to tighten a knot, and then turns to offer her hand.

“Thanks for humoring me last night,” she says. “I know you’d rather have spent it alone.”

If asked the night before he would have said exactly that, but to his surprise he finds that he doesn’t regret accepting her offer. She proved a surprisingly enjoyable companion, and if he’d rather have had the bones of a friendship be formed elsewhere, well, he’s learned to accept that he can’t control everything. There are worse ways to get to know someone, and if her cleverness means that he’ll have to be especially on his guard, then it’s no less than he deserves for the folly that led them here. If nothing else, he can at least be assured that the woman raised up as a savior by the faithful is not stupid, or careless, or cruel.

“It was my pleasure,” he says honestly, and grasps her gloved hand in his own. Her grip is as steady as he would have expected. “Thank you for preventing my demise in the jaws of a bear.”

It’s a joke entirely meant to earn the brief flash of a smile that she gives him, and she squeezes his hand once more, quickly, before letting go. “See you back in Haven?”

“Of course,” he says, and nods once before turning away. Still, though, something stops him, and he turns back to ask, entirely on impulse- “You know, I don’t believe I ever got your name.”

Her face goes still for a moment, and he wonders what she’s thinking. It’s not a question that would give most people pause- but then, he’s entirely too aware that she’s not most people.

“Oh,” she says, and gives him a brief, fumbling grin. It’s less easy than he’s become used to in her smiles, almost a little shy, and he is distantly alarmed by how endearing he finds it. “Um. It’s Rook.”

_Rook._ Simple and short, lacking in ornamentation or pretense: it suits her. “That doesn’t sound like a Dalish name.”

“That’s ‘cause it isn’t,” she says cheerfully. “Any more than I suspect your sainted mother named you _pride._ ”

_Fair enough,_ he thinks. He has been _Solas_ so long he doesn’t truly remember what he was called before. Stubbornness, perhaps, to use it at all, but who here will know it in this day and age, when he is nothing but a story to scare children? The luxury of being only exactly who he is is one he will not be able to enjoy for long, so he will take advantage of it while he can. Perhaps she feels the same, surrounded by humans who seek to exalt her. He would not blame her if she did.

He gestures to her _vallaslin_ with a flick of his fingers. “Fear? Or Deceit?”

There’s a flicker of startlement on her face, and then a slow, pleased smile curls her lips. If he found himself angling for a smile before, it was nothing in comparison to the satisfaction he feels now.

“Those are ravens,” she says, but her eyes don’t leave his. “A rook is a type of crow.”

“Of course,” he says smoothly. “My mistake. No offense was intended.”

“None taken. Have a good trip down the mountain.”

“And to you.” He gives a final nod and turns, and gets as far as the edge of the clearing before she calls after him.

“Solas?”

He looks back to see her looking after him, foot still braced against the sled. She brings her right hand to her mouth and opens and closes her forefingers in the hunter's-sign for _bird_ , shifting her thumb to her lips with the flourish that means _secret._ The combination, he knows, is Dalish hand-talk slang for Dirthamen. On her face is a sly grin he can only describe as _wolfish._

“Why can’t it be both?”


End file.
